July 2009

Within the IT com­mu­nity “social media con­sump­tion con­tin­ues to out­pace edi­to­r­ial and ven­dor con­tent con­sump­tion,” accord­ing to sur­vey results just released by Toolbox.com. In June 2009 they sur­veyed almost 3000 exec­u­tives and pro­fes­sion­als across 109 coun­tries, based on names sourced from Tool­box’ online IT com­mu­nity. Results were reported as Toolbox.com/PJA IT Social Media Index: Wave IV. […]

Razor­fish has pub­lished the results of a sur­vey and analy­sis they did jointly with TNS Cym­fony. In their report enti­tled Flu­ent, they explored the links between brand affin­ity, pur­chase deci­sions, and the impact of peo­ple and social net­works at dif­fer­ent stages of the con­sumer buy­ing cycle. This post describes the types of social influ­encers, and looks at the impli­ca­tions of Razorfish’s pro­posed social media met­ric for B2B marketers.

Apple’s Secret Sauce

July 7, 2009

These days it seems every­one wants to imi­tate Apple, but few really know what it takes. This post exam­ines some of the key fac­tors that set Apple apart, from the per­spec­tive of a per­son who has worked with or for Apple since 1983. From design to prod­uct strat­egy to brand and employee val­ues, it’s a hard act to follow.

Revised on April 15, 2011

Ser­ial entre­pre­neur and exec­u­tive coach Michael Schut­zler has asked me to review his new book, Inspir­ing Excel­lence: A Path to Excep­tional Lead­er­ship. It’s an excel­lent hand­book for those who aspire to lead­er­ship, as well as expe­ri­enced lead­ers look­ing to hone their skills. I’ve known Michael pro­fes­sion­ally for almost a decade, so it’s a treat to […]

While writ­ing a rec­om­men­da­tion for a col­league on LinkedIn, I came across a great exam­ple of social net­work­ing at its best — pro­fes­sion­als shar­ing their wis­dom, based on prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence and client engage­ments, with a uni­ver­sity professor:

There are a num­ber of bril­liant thinkers and inno­va­tors I’d love to learn from and fol­low via Twit­ter, but can’t, because the sig­nal to noise ratio is too high. Per­haps if I earned my liv­ing by pro­mot­ing social media mar­ket­ing, I’d have time to fol­low more peo­ple, but right now it’s hard to jus­tify. A […]

Ear­lier I blogged on the pur­pose of a busi­ness and the prob­lems that can arise when orga­ni­za­tions lack a clear sense of pur­pose, or when they define suc­cess nar­rowly in finan­cial (shareholder-centric) terms. Today’s post focuses on busi­ness pur­pose and its links to cor­po­rate brand strat­egy. In the con­text of brand strat­egy, pur­pose ener­gizes the […]

Spam: Finally Solved

July 3, 2009

Block­ing spam and keep­ing viruses out of our mail­boxes are huge has­sles for small busi­nesses like mine. We don’t have in-house IT staff and the techs we rent by the hour don’t appear to know what the best spam-blocking options are for a busi­ness of our scale. Consumer-grade spam block­ers just don’t make the grade. We’ve finally found a solution.

Alright, I con­fess: I’m a closet geek (or at least my hus­band says so). The lat­est evi­dence? Yes­ter­day I installed the release can­di­date for Win­dows 7 on my Mac­Book Pro under Boot Camp. Iron­i­cally it took me as long to install Win­dows 7 RC1 as it took the plumber to repair and replace our leaky outside […]

Blogging, Take Two

July 2, 2009

As time has gone on, I’ve real­ized that a dual-purpose blog is poten­tially con­fus­ing to busi­ness asso­ciates and con­ver­sa­tion­al­ists whose per­sonal inter­ests dif­fer from mine. It’s also chal­lenged friends and fam­ily who want to stay cur­rent, but find these pro­fes­sional top­ics bor­ing or irrel­e­vant. So here’s what I decided to do…